The bitching is a starting point because the people start realizing some things. How you go about wrestling back the control of your country is for deliberation.

Certainly, Europe should start by protecting its borders better, and this by helping border countries like Greece and Italy instead of making them bearing the brunt of the invasion and erecting fences. The patrolling EU Frontex should push back the migrants instead of "saving" them as a starting point. These are people who puncture their boats ,etc, to be saved. Why fall into their trap? Manage first the incoming waves before managing those who are already inside.

Greece does not have to take what comes passively. Hopefully, your ancestors did not make sacrifices for nothing. Don't give up your country so easily, you have only one.

I have no country. I just happened to be born in Greece cause my Anatolian ancestors were driven out of my homeland and ended up as refugees in that shit hole that is called Greece.

That aside, you've spoken like a true Canadian Hero. Bitch, bitch, bitch... until the nanny comes to take care of whatever it is that bothers you. What the hell do you need to deliberate about? Have you ever been in a fight? You either kick, punch, smack or you turn tail and run. There is nothing in between.

If Greece wants to stop the next refugee stream they'll have to line up their security forces and kick, punch, club whomever comes across. And if that's not enough, escalate to guns. That's how standing your ground looks in reality. It is messy, it is ugly, and it has to be brutal enough to make people turn tail and seek refugee in the war zone they just came from. Do the Greeks have the will to do that? If not they should shut the fuck up and acquaint themselves with the new realities. Man up or shut up, as they say here in Texas.

It's not as simple as that. There are international laws that have to be followed. Greece is part of the EU and it has to follow laws and regulations agreed upon by all EU members.

Greece can't unilaterally do whatever they want with the refugees flocking to the Greek shores. Also, there's the humanitarian side of things too. You can't just kick, punch and club women, children and elderly even if they're illegal immigrants.

It's not as simple as that. There are international laws that have to be followed. Greece is part of the EU and it has to follow laws and regulations agreed upon by all EU members.

Greece can't unilaterally do whatever they want with the refugees flocking to the Greek shores. Also, there's the humanitarian side of things too. You can't just kick, punch and club women, children and elderly even if they're illegal immigrants.

Yes. Of course: The EU,just paid Erdogan 3 bil Euros to have his boys do the punching, kicking and shoving to keep the refugees from making it to Greece.And his boys are doing a stellar job. Arrivals went from 150 K a month down to 5 K a month.

And remember how the EU reprimanded those Macedonians for doing the kicking, punching, hosing and tear-gassing? But then again the Macedonians are descendants of Phillip and Alexander they wont let some EU slimes tell them what they can and can not do in their country.

Anyhow, I'm value free and completely impartial on the matter. If Greece wants to stem the flow she has to act forcefully, otherwise shut up take them in and provide for them. It really is that simple. And don't expect, after last years experience, aunt Angie to take them of your hands when Tajip orders his boys to take it easy and watch millions cross over.

You do realize that Greece would have collapsed last year if Angie hadn't taken 1 mil of those good people of our hands and if Tajip didn't have his boys out in force stemming the flood. Well, Angie and her peasants had it with refugees and Tajip had it with the Euro fags, especialy the progresive lefty ones, who just voted against Turkey in the EU parliament. And he's already floating the Idea of renegotiating treaties. All that he needs to do now to destabilize Greece is: NOTHING.

Just sit back relax and watch Greece being flooded with Muslim refugees. Put a few provocateurs in the mix and let things go their way. Greece will fall apart in no time.

By the way, Ajaxmonkey, why do you say that the people on the other side, how do you call them, Skopje or something, are Macedonians who are descendants from Phillip and Alexander? Isn't Macedonia in Greece and don't we know where the kingdom of Phillip and Alexander was? Why do the Skopje claim themselves to be Macedonians and descendants? The Greeks deny that they are. I would just like to understand the facts. Do those people even speak Greek?

They don't speak Greek. They're slavic people who came to this area much later than the Greek speaking Macedonians.

Why should the Macedonians speak Greek?You call the people of Egypt Egyptians, the people of Mexico Mexicans, the people of Greece Greeks... So what do you call the people of Macedonia?

Macedonians of course. And their language is: Macedonian.They are descendants of Philip and Alexander to the same extend the Egyptians are descendants of the Pharaohs, the Mexicans descendants of the Aztecs and the Greeks descendants of Pericles. Based on this reasoning the world has no issue calling them Macedonian. Only the Graecians insist on calling them Skops or Fyromians. Yet the same Graecians are also likely to tell you that the Kalasha of Pakistan are of Macedonian descent. Go figure!

And NO the Ancient Makedonians (with a K) DID NOT SPEAK Greek prior to the 5th Century BCE at which point their elite adopted Greek speech. The native languages of the region were Illyrian, Wrygian (which became Phrygian in Asia Minor), Thracian, Paionian, Mygdonian, Dacian and so forth. There were no GREEKS to speak GREEK anywhere prior to the 7th Century BCE. The Greek language, like any other language in the world, emerged as a distinct well defined entity once a common script was introduced and the literary and poetic works that affixed forms and expressions were created by the ancient poets. The grand engineer of the Hellenic language was Homer. You can learn that much by reading Thucydides. And if you wish to learn something about modern Greece I suggest you read Roide's "ANTHELLINICA".

Thank you Admin and Ajaxmonkey to shed some light on my questions. The situation is pretty complicated and I would have to read up some more when I have time.

One thing I find strange, Ajaxmonkey, is if, as you said, all the Ancient Greeks have disappeared and the Modern Greeks have no relation to the Ancient Greeks, why would the Ancient Macedonians not have also disappeared? So, how could the Modern Macedonians, which the Skops claim to be, have any relation with and be descendants of Phillip and Alexander?

Aivali (or Kydonies) has an interesting story. I found a Greek scholar whose family was from Aivali too and she has done some extensive research for the town and the Greek people who used to live in the area. Aivali and Moschonisia have been inhabited by Greeks since the ancient times, but what she found out was that most Greeks were slaughtered by the Turks in or around 1821. So the "new" Greeks who migrated back to the area after 1830, or so, were mostly not "related" to the ancient/original inhabitants of the land.

My family most likely came from Crete, but she thinks that most other Greeks who migrated to Aivali in the 1830's were Greeks from the nearby islands of Lesvos, Chios and Limnos. They lived there for almost 100 years and they were the ones who eventually were permanently kicked out of Aiviali in 1922.

Aivali was one of the few towns in Asia Minor in the 1800's whose population was largely Greek (in most other towns there were more Turks than Greeks). Aivali had several Greek churches, Greek schools etc. Its story is very interesting and shows the diversity of most towns in the area.

My paternal grandmother came to Greece from Nikomidia, her mother was born there too, but her family came to Nikomidia from Aivali. They may have been of the original Aivaliote who were driven out around the 1800's. My grandmother was orphaned when she was 12. She was the only surviving member of her family and all I know is from her. My Aivaliote great grandmothers maiden name was Eumenidou. And you know what the sad part is?

Me and my dear old mother are the only ones alive who still remember that once upon a time there was an Eumenides family that fled from Aivali to Nikomidia. It doesn't matter to me if their blood was Hellenic, Karian, Lydian, Phrygian or Turkish. It is my blood. And as long as I live the memory of the Eumenides will remain alive in this world. This is my pledge of allegiance to my kin.

If you do the math you may be able to figure out whether her family was of the original Aivaliote from before 1821.

If I'll assume that your grandmother was born sometime in the 1900s(?) and her mom was born sometime in the 1870's then it's most likely that her family came to Aivali after the massacre of the 1820's. So they may came from one of the Aegean islands around Aivali (as I found out from my research), lived in Aivali for one or two generations and then moved again to Nikomidia.

It's almost impossible to tell where these people migrated from and almost impossible to find out any supporting documentation for any of this. This is the sad thing for most of us whose family came from Asia Minor. There's no way to trace back all the steps and all the ancestors.

Those were different times, but on the most part those Greeks who came from Asia Minor were not treated well by the locals.

The Greeks of Asia Minor were industrious, hard working people. Most of them merchants and business owners for several generations. As mentioned above, these were people who were not afraid to move and migrate in times where travelling just a few kms from village to village was considered a huge undertaking. As compared to the Greeks of the mainland they were much more "cosmopolitan" living in much more open and diverse societies.

It's no surprise that people like myself and ajax chose to migrate again, just a generation or two after our ancestors moved back to mainland Greece. Moving around is probably in our genes

It's unfortunate that there are most likely no records showing all these migrations, but one can imagine those enterprising ancestors moving from place to place every few generations. Sometimes driven out by conflict, or sometimes by the need to find a better place to raise their family, and yet other times by a sense of adventure. Those were no easy trips and easy moves by any means. I can imagine my ancestors moving from Crete (or possibly some other island, Chios possibly) to Aivali back in the early 1800's. Loading a small boat with all their belongings and heading to a land just recently vacated because of the massacre of the local Greek population. I can imagine how daring these people must have been. And then the grandchildren of these enterprising people had to move again a century later, back to Greece proper, again because of persecution by the Turks. And then roughly another century later these people's grandchildren (ajax and I) had to move again - for different reasons this time - further away from our ancestral lands.

Ajax sees himself a person without a country. My country, my home, is the Aegean sea. This is where most of my ancestors lived and died. Be it Crete, Chios, Aivali, Smyrna, Constantinople or Piraeus, they spent their lives in or around the Aegean sea. That's my home, and it really feels like home every time I go back and I look at my beloved Aegean sea.

they didn't "went back" they were uprooted and stranded on foreign shores. It was a traumatic experience. The ones who came from the eastern shores of the Aegean were in touch with Greece so there was some familiarity there. But nevertheless when Anatolian Greeks said the word "Patrida" they always meant their Anatolian homeland.

The notions of "Motherland", "Homeland" that are held by the urban citizen of a nation state are reflexes that are conditioned into a population through Mandatory National Education. This are artificial constructs. When my Grandfather said "Motherland" he really meant THE LAND. The land in which his father and grandfather rested. The land on which the century old trees planted by his for fathers had their roots. The land from which he broke the stone and cut the lumber to build his home. To him Motherland was something tangible, not an abstract idea or a conditioned pattern.

When my people first came to Greece, they were quarantined for months in Thessaloniki. Most people in that city where Jews who spoke Ladino (Judaeo Spanish dialect) among themselves and Turkish with everybody else. They hated us and we hated them. The native Greek minority in Thessaloniki was split in their attitudes towards us newcomers. Not that they didn't acknowledge kinship, our native tongues were mutually intelligible after all. But those were also the people who enlisted in the Greek army to fight for the "Megali Idea". And that Idea came crashing down. Many of them had lost brothers and fathers in the campaign. A lot of them were almost as lost as we were. The ones who always stood up for the greater good and kept the chaos at bay were the Cretan Gendarmery and Army officers from southern Greece. They knew that us being there was the only way for Greece to hold on to Makedonia. But I think their Hellenic Idealism went far beyond expediency.

After a while, my Grandfathers were asked to choose where to settle. My paternal Grandfather, and his kin, picked Mygdonia which lies east of Thessaloniki. My maternal Grandfather picked Pella, close to the city of Giannitsa. The land he was granted was, literally, on top of Alexanders ancient capital. After they were granted land, they lived as they always did. Build homes, cleared fields, planted orchards, and tended to the Almond and Walnut trees as they took root. As it is custom among my kin, when I was born my Grandfathers planted 2 almonds and 2 walnuts for me. Both the walnuts and one of the almonds took root and every time I visit my Paternal Grandfathers old house, which is my house now, I embrace those trees. Their roots are my roots.

My connection is not to abstract things and Ideals such as GOD and COUNTRY. I'm connected to my blood and to the things people of my blood have left behind.

Your story and Ajax's are painful to hear, but also heart-warming because there is hope for the future whenever there is a migration.

What I don't understand is why the Greeks, like your ancestors, went back to Aivali in the 1800's after the massacres by the Turks.

I read that at the time of the big population swap, some of the Greeks who went back to Greece left for America shortly after. Probably because there were not enough opportunities in Greece, considering it was a big swap.

It is unfortunate that the Greeks from Asia Minor were not well treated by the local Greeks at that time. It must be hard coming from people who are Greeks like you.

Now I have to go read Ajax's post as he posted it while I was typing mine.